Episode 001: Cancer Awareness Eradicates Guilt
Nov 14, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
In this episode, I'm talking to medical oncologist David Pook from Melbourne, Australia. David treated my cancer and he has been incredibly positive and supportive throughout. In the interview with David we get to find out more about:
the biggest development in cancer treatment this decade
one of the most common misconceptions that people have around cancer
DNA testing and ethical challenges moving forward
psychological fallout from cancer diagnosis
the importance of regular exercise during treatment
when do get a second opinion
how cancer awareness eradicates guilt
Full Transcript
Joe: Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for doing this. I’ve been really looking forward to this. Please tell me about yourself. What do you do? What are you passionate about?
David: Well, thanks for inviting me on, Joe. I’m a medical oncologist with a special interest in GU cancers. That’s kidney, bladder, prostate and testicular cancers. I trained and obviously did a medical degree and then I did physician training, specialising in medical oncology. I actually went off and did a higher degree, actually, in colon cancer, different area. Still, learnt some skills about clinical trials and at the moment, I’ve got a mixed practice. I do roughly half private work, the other half public, working at Monash and I also spend a little bit of time at the university, as well, and I do a lot of clinical trials. My passion is probably looking at new treatments for cancers, trying to push the field forward and improve on where we are now.
Joe: Fantastic. What are some of the developments that are happening right now?
David: Well, I think the biggest development that most people would say of this decade is the immune therapies. The immune therapies, they give us huge possibilities and we’ve seen amazing results in cancers, like, melanomas. Like most things, they provide big challenges, as well, so there’s that potential to have amazing responses, and we’re seeing really nice responses in kidney cancers and in bladder cancers. The toxicity is hard to manage. We’re dealing with a whole load of new toxicities. This is a whole new way of treating cancer. It’s completely different to chemotherapy and to other treatments that we currently use.
Joe: If we think about opinions on cancer, and you mentioned the result is the different treatments and they’ve got new research coming out, in your experience, what are the most common misconceptions that people have around cancer?
David: I think the most common misconception is that it’s always preventable. A lot of people seem to come with a little sense of guilt, like, what have I done? What did I do wrong to get the cancer? Often, actually, in nearly all cases there’s no blame for a cancer. Some things you can do can increase the risk of cancer, for example, if you smoke, you’re going to increase the risk of certain cancers. A lot of cancers just come through pure bad luck. I think some people find that hard to deal with because it seems very unfair.
Joe: What about DNA and in terms of hereditary cancer, is there anything on that front, do you think, that people should be concerned about?
David: Not so much concerned about but I think we’re going to see huge changes in that area. I don’t now over which time period, I assume within the next one to two decades. The biggest thing we’ve seen is in the area of prostate cancer, where it turns out that maybe one in ten men diagnosed with prostate cancer have an underlying problem with DNA repair. That was a finding that was really unexpected. What’s made that possible, or that result possible is the fact that we are much better able to interrogate DNA now, looking for mutations. The first DNA repair defect was called BRCA-1. B-R-C-A. It stands for breast cancer, BRCA-1. Soon after that,
